10 Ways to Improve Olympic Soccer in Rio for 2016

This summer, soccer fans were lucky enough to have Olympic soccer fill that normally uncomfortable void between early and mid-June international games and the beginning of the club season in mid-August.

However, most fans would agree, as entertaining as this summer’s Olympic soccer tournament was, it could be better.

Remove the Age Restriction for the Men’s Tournament

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Currently, in the men’s tournament, nations are restricted to forming their rosters from their U-23 teams, with three “overage” players allowed on each team.

And while it can be great fun watching the wily old veterans like Ryan Giggs teaming up with a bunch of energetic youngsters, almost everyone accepts the fact that the Olympic tournament is a second-rate tournament.

Many years ago, FIFA created the U-23 restriction because they were afraid that the Olympic tournament would come to rival the World Cup. While removing the age restriction would allow more of the world’s best players to participate, with only 16 teams in the tournament on the men’s side, it would still be only half the size of the World Cup.

And even if the Olympic tournament did begin to rival the World Cup, isn't that good for the game?

Hold Both the Men’s and Women’s Finals on the Weekend

The Olympic schedule was the same for every team throughout the tournament. All of the women’s teams played their games, and on the next day all of the men’s teams played their games.

Then, after a day off from soccer, the schedule would repeat.

This continued for the entire tournament with one exception. While the women’s final was held according to this schedule, the men’s finalists got one additional day of rest in order to make the final a weekend game and to give it more exposure.

Certainly, it would not be too much to ask have both finals on the weekend, with one on Saturday and one on Sunday. The U.S. women played Japan in the women’s final on a Thursday at 2:45 ET, when most Americans were still at work. In Tokyo, the game kicked off at 4:45 a.m. on a Friday.

Keep Showing the Games Live

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Okay, this is one thing that NBC actually got right with its TV coverage. It was refreshing to be able to watch the games live instead of having to wait for NBC’s time-delayed coverage of gymnastics, track and swimming events that everyone already knew the results of.

Apparently soccer was not important enough for NBC to time-delay it and screw it up.

Do a Better Job with the TV Schedule

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It was confusing what channel the soccer games were going to be on on any given day. Some of the games were on NBC’s soccer-specific channel, others were broadcast on MSNBC and still others on the NBC Sports Network.

While it was nice to have them all televised, the digital guide—at least on DirecTV—had a six hour block assigned that would simply say “Olympics” followed by the 10 Olympic events that would be broadcast at some point during that six-hour block.